He’s Rubber, She’s Glue

Hillary Clinton was in an unenviable position in last night’s CNN debate from Austin. Beforehand, our cable TV friends were all talking about how she had to come up with a “game-changer,” how Obama would “win” if it was a tie or even if she outpointed him, how she would have to land a “knockout punch,” how she would have to—what, exactly? No one had any actual suggestions for that. Because there was really nothing she could do, apart from hoping Obama would be gallant enough to commit a gargantuan gaffe.

She tried being mean once, with that prepackaged crack about “change you can Xerox.” The crowd booed, and so, I suspect, did the folks at home. But even before the booing she didn’t look happy about what she was saying. If this was the fun part, she wasn’t having fun. She looked a lot more comfortable, even content in a melancholy sort of way, at the end, when she said, “No matter what happens in this contest—and I am honored, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored,” and the two clasped hands.

That was a game-changer of sorts, but the game it changed was her own. My hunch is that she has recognized that there are no magic formulas that can win this for her, and she has decided that if go out she must she intends to go out with class. Last night she backed away from her recent talk of Obama being unfit to be commander in chief—a very dangerous theme, because (unlike, say, her argument that his health-care plan doesn’t go far enough) it hands McCain a powerful talking point. Clinton will continue to talk about her differences with Obama on questions like an individual mandate for health insurance, the proper balance between conciliation and confrontation with Republicans, and the conditions under which a President should meet with nasty foreign leaders. She’ll talk about her experience and her diligence. This kind of thing hasn’t “worked” for her, but at least it is her. She’ll give it her best shot, not her worst shot, and let the chips fall where it looks like they’re falling.

“Going negative” has been a bust. It could never be anything but a bust, because there is no audience for it in the Democratic Party. Her supporters (almost all of them) like him; his supporters (most of them) like her. The finger-pointing has already begun: she spent too much money on fancy hotel rooms, her husband made too many blunders, she never settled on a theme, and so on ad infinitum. But all that may be beside the point—the point being that Barack Obama is a phenomenon that comes along once in a lifetime. Unfortunately for Hillary, it’s her lifetime; fortunately for the rest of us, it’s ours.

Hendrik Hertzberg is a senior editor and staff writer at The New Yorker. He regularly blogs about politics.